Finding ways to spin your gamesor
The stable King and his revolving servants

by Joćo Pedro Neto and Bill
Taylor

Introduction

We (Bill Taylor and Joao Neto) have invented and started to play some games
with a common rule theme: if some condition is met, the moved piece changes its
powers. Like a game with rotating officials. This, if done well, can result in
very dynamic games, where some pieces lead very wild lives.

Joao invented a game based on a simple idea: depending whether the turn
number is even/odd, the moved piece is promoted/demoted. This basic change makes
(in Joao's opinion) a very good chess variant, called Promotions and Demotions,
or just ProDem. But, is this the only possible way to use this dynamic idea?

Revolving Games

There is an old chess variant, named Revolving Chess (whose origins we don't
know), whose rules are:

REVOLVING CHESS

Same as FIDE, except:

Each moved non-king piece, changes its status in the following order:

Knight to Bishop,

Bishop to Rook

Rook to Queen

Queen to Knight

note: The original game was fully "royal", but we play with
stalemate = win for stalemater, though still with castling (R changing to Q).

Since Revolving Chess is the older game, we may think of it as the standard
revolving positional game in this text, despite the fact that Promotions and
Demotions was an independent discovery. In fact, ProDem was the first game we
played, and it was then that many different and yet related ideas appeared.
Firstly, the rules of ProDem:

PROMOTIONS & DEMOTIONS [aka "even-up, odd-down"]

The FIDE rules apply except in the following:

On even turns, a moved (non king) man is promoted after move completion.

On odd turns, a moved (non king) man is demoted after move completion.

The Promotion/Demotion system has this ordering: P < N or B < R <
Q.

Pawns on the 1st rank may move 1 or 2 squares.

Pawns on the 8th rank cannot move, but may be captured.

There is no En-Passant, Mate, Check or Castling.

The winner is whoever first captures the opponent's King.9. White does not
play on turn 1.

The Rook is probably the strongest piece. It may move any turn, and still
transforms into a strong piece.

A (possibly good) method of play would be to always move your king on odd
moves, so your piece strength constantly went up and never down. However,
this would waste so much time it probably wouldn't pay off anyway, since a
player doing that increases his army, but slows by half its efficiency.

Of course, making the other player moves his King on a even turn, makes
him loose a promoting turn.

A pawn on the last rank cannot move. That is especially bad, since the
other player can use it as a protecting wall.

Well, taking different behavior given a turn number is one possibility,
others exist:

which colour square the piece is on

which colour square the piece goes to

whether the piece changes square colour when it moves

whether the piece moves forward or back (allowing no promotion for
sideways)

whether the piece has any immediate neighbours or not

whether the piece is making a capture or not

These options can be divided into two groups, where the game is completely
defined by presenting:

A) merely the board and the next player

B) the board and the next player and some extra information (like the turn
number as in ProDem)

Notice that in this classification, FIDE Chess belongs to group b), as it may
be necessary to state that a King is moved (for castling) or if some pawn was
moved (to make en passant capturing). We both feel that group a) games are more
elegant, (but that does not mean dropping the others!! :)

With that last point as motivation, Bill invented the next game:

MOVE UP, TAKE DOWN

All men move as in chess, except there is no castling or en passant.

Movement is compulsory, and once his king is captured a player loses.

Once a move is made, that piece immediately changes into the next one up
this cycle - P to N to B to R to Q to P; except if it was a capture, then
the order is the opposite.

A pawn on the 1st rank may move 1 or 2 spaces if not capturing.A pawn on
the 8th rank may never move again, but can be captured.

If there are no pawns on the board before a move is to be made, the order
changes to N B R Q N, (or its reverse for captures).

We would like you to specially notice rule 5. Its motivation was to ensure
that a board with no pawns would no longer require knowledge of its *orientation*,
similar to the "no-external-info" mentioned above. However, it has
resulted in a new idea:- that when a certain condition is true (no pawns), the
game dynamics changes. This is not a common feature in Chess Variants, but may
be an excellent concept to extend.